Comfort Owusu
THE EXECUTIVE Director of the Association of Rural Banks Ghana (ARB-Ghana), Comfort Owusu, has tasked rural and community banks (RCBs) to lead the financial inclusion drive with provision of tailored and affordable financial products within their catchment areas in a responsible and sustainable way.
Speaking at the grand durbar to climax
this year’s Rural Banking Week celebrations of the Central Chapter of Association
of Rural Banks (ARB-Ghana) at Elmina in the Central Region, she indicated that if
Ghana was ever to achieve the desired level of financial inclusion for its
citizens, it would depend largely on the activism of RCBs.
According to her, the quest to spearhead
financial inclusion as a matter of urgency required the collective energy of
RCBs to stimulate each other’s thinking and actions, to help change the lives
of people in rural communities.
“It is sad to say that there are still
millions of people in the country without access to financial services; people
who might never in their lifetime have access to a bank account, secure a loan
from a bank to start a business, or even to save towards a pension and for
financial freedom. It is for people like these that the issue of financial
inclusion needs to take centre-stage in all our dealings as rural and community
banks,” she noted.
Mrs. Owusu said RCBs were the engine to
drive the national agenda of financial inclusion by taking banking to the
doorstep of persons in remote parts of the country, and for that matter it was
necessary for them to take actions which resulted in expanding people’s access
to services offered by the formal financial sector.
About 60 per cent of the Ghanaian
population live in rural communities, and the only financial institution they
can have access to within any 10-mile radius is a rural or community bank.
She further implored RCBs to meet the need
to expand their access points across the country so as to offer convenience and
comfort to depositors and customers.
“We, as RCBs, need to find simple,
creative and innovative ways of educating the people in our catchment areas about
the tailored products they can take advantage of. While we do all these, we
need to also pay attention to consumer protection and our financial
capabilities in order to promote responsible and sustainable financial
services,” she added.
